The Wall Street Journal has an article today about the referendum.  To the reporter’s credit, he avoids the usual style of foreign reporting — asking taxi-drivers on the way in from the airport to the 5-star hotel — and goes to Carlow and Laois to get the viewpoint of farmers.  Declan Ganley and Ulick McEvaddy are mentioned briefly, and not in the context of the controversy around links between their corporate and political operations.  Worth a read.

An interesting clash of interpretation on the widely discussed style of the new Taoiseahc. For Pat Leahy the new style is “clear thinking and firm decision-making”. For the Sunday Indo, it is “authoritarian” and “stalinist”. An enigmatic man.

The Offaly Independent reports that a massive caravan of Offaly folk will descend on the Dail today to celebrate the election of Brian Cowen to the post of Taoiseach (at around 3.30pm - live on Oireachtas.ie)

“There`ll be a festive atmosphere,” Tom O`Donovan of O`Donovan Cowen Solicitors, a firm in which Minister Cowen is involved, said. The solicitors firm is planning to close it`s doors on Wednesday with most of the staff travelling to Dublin to join in the celebrations.
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The Offaly contingent have even arranged a designated meeting point in the city which they are keeping tight lipped on for now.

More celebrations will take place over the weekend as the All-Ireland Champion new Taoiseach takes a tour of his home county and, of course, Clara

Gardai and the Civil Defence are preparing for a continuation of celebrations on Saturday and Sunday when the triumphant Taoiseach arrives home.

Visiting first Edenderry at 12 noon before leaving for O`Connor Square in Tullamore at 1.30pm where up to 10,000 people are expected to greet him, Brian Cowen will attend a Civic Reception in Aras an Chontae at 3pm before returning to his home town of Clara.

In Clara, the Civil Defence will be assisting with medical points set up around the town. Some Tullamore publicans are even putting on coaches to ferry people to Clara and back.

The tour of the county will not end in Clara however as Brian Cowen will visit Ferbane at 2.30pm and Birr at 4pm on Sunday, May 11.

Brian Cowen released a statement in the last hour announcing his candidacy for the Fianna Fail leadership and succession of Bertie Ahern. It is interesting to see he was nominated by Brian Lenihan, a man widely tipped to have his eye on becoming the Brian Cowen’ to Brian Cowen and succeeding the next Taoiseach when he eventually steps down. Cowen was seconded by Mary Coughlan and released a statement to transmit his “respect” and “humility” at this moment.

In my 24 years as a public representative I have come to appreciate the huge commitment and effort of the thousands of party members and supporters who are the lifeblood of the organisation. It is on their behalf that those of us who are members of the parliamentary party advance its interests and serve those of the public through our work in the Oireachtas.
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I have witnessed this work from close quarters and it is with the greatest possible respect for Bertie Ahern’s contribution to our party’s welfare and with genuine humility that I put my name forward. It follows that I would be deeply honoured if my parliamentary colleagues determine that I should succeed the Taoiseach as party leader and to be their nominee for the then vacant position of Taoiseach.

Perhaps too much can be read into the nominees in this situation but Cowen will no doubt have had his pick of people to nominate him. Lenihan is making slow progress with his brief in Justice and will no doubt seek to fill the gap left by the Cappo di tutti cappi in Dublin Fianna Fail.

Succeeding Cowen as Deputy Leader - delivering Cowen a degree of weight in Dublin where Fianna Fail will need it, and moving at some point to Finance before the election, appear to be the natural signs of Lenihan’s progression toward that goal and the metrics of his success - again it may be too much to read into him nominating Cowen but its our place to speculate.

Cowen probably wont miss responding to news like this from the central bank as Minister Responsible.

It strikes one as serendipity - for the opposition at least - that the Dail debates a motion on the three reports from last week into Port Laoise, the one that gave rise to the Naughton letter and entered ’systems-failure’ in the political lexicon by failing patients in a grotesque multiplicity of manners while the HSE meets with relevant unions to discuss €300 million worth of cuts and possible A&E closures.

On another note, it will be interesting to see how HSE martyr Ned O Keeffe votes tonight after his readmission to the Fianna Fail Parliamentary Party - if he can avoid an enforced absence.